The following evening...

Let it be known that Kali Belladonna was a woman on a mission. And as far as Jaune was concerned, his mother-in-law was determined to see that mission completed...which was terrifying because Blake's mom was as insane, if not more insane, as his own.

"We'll be back tomorrow!" cooed Kali as she locked the door to their fertility hut.

Jaune counted about a dozen locks and bolts being fitted into place much to the visible chagrin of Blake who had been nothing but a mountain of embarrassment since their wedding night. Apparently, the venerable First Lady of Menagerie refused to accept that their honeymoon had ended until her daughter was confirmed to be genuinely pregnant.

As such, with the express permission of Prime Minister Ghira Belladonna (who was most likely under duress from Kali), Jaune and Blake were herded into a traditional Menagerie fertility hut for an entire night—twelve hours, to be precise—with the sole purpose of ensuring the continued bloodlines of both their respective families. (That was after they had to clean up the hut in the wake of the last occupants who really, really let themselves go.)

"I'm really sorry about this," Blake apologized, still red with shame for her mother.

"You know, we can just adopt."

"I think you forgot how that conversation went."

Jaune winced and looked over at his wife who was dressed in a specially-designed garment which Kali claimed was a traditional Menagerie fertility gown. Both ceremonial and functional. Ceremonial in that it was used in faunus fertility rituals dating back centuries. Functional in that it showed way too much skin and looked like it was expected to be easily torn off in the heat of passion—such clothing were not meant to last, it seemed.

But passion was far from what Jaune felt today. And he was sure Blake would rather be elsewhere at the moment given how uncomfortable she was. Jaune himself was wearing the male variant: a fertility suit. Which was actually just a small toga draped over his shoulder to cover the 'custom-tailored' easy-to-remove loincloths wrapped around his groin.

"Brothers, I don't know how we can do this," he groaned, laying on his back atop the perfumed cushions and blankets.

Blake hugged her knees. "I'm thinking of how to pretend I'm pregnant."

"Say, since this hut is propped up on giant stilts, maybe we can break a hole through the floor—"

"A lot of couples have tried that hence the steel and concrete reinforcement."

Jaune blinked. "Then what was the point of raising a hut above the ground?"

His wife shrugged. "Tradition. Something about keeping critters, rodents, intruders, and Grimm from creeping up onto the couple when they were busy."

"By raising the house twenty feet off the ground."

"I mean...it worked. Mostly."

Jaune shook his head, snickering. "I bet some of the guards outside put up their sleeping bags directly below us."

"Knowing my mom, she probably added another squadron or two for 'extra security.'"

"Are these huts even soundproof? They might be expecting us to make...sounds. You willing to bet they've got a betting pool on us getting freaky like Nora and the others?"

Blake dropped her head in her hands. "Ugh, don't make me think about sex right now, please."

"I was just saying." He grimaced and pinched the bridge of his nose. "And now you got me thinking about it, too."

She grabbed a nearby pillow and hugged it tightly, muttering to herself. Jaune himself, almost did the same until he noticed how quiet it was. That and he was starting to sweat because this hut was as ventilated as he hoped it would be. Seriously, a window would be nice but all they had was an air conditioner in the corner and a meshed-over smoke hole directly above them. For a moment, he imagined a large crow peeking in with its blood-red eyes.

That was when he noticed it. "Hey honey, you hear anything outside?"

Blake blearily stared at him before looking around, her feline ears straightening. "... Come to think of it... It's gotten quiet."

"Too quiet."

"I think... I think they're actually listening. Waiting for us to..."

Jaune crawled to a corner, pulled away the carpet, and pressed his ear against the floorboards. Even with the structural reinforcement, he was able to pick out some whispers from the gendarmes posted underneath them.

Under the hut, the guard captain of the Menagerie Gendarmerie platoon guarding the fertility hut checked his watch. He still could not believe that he allowed himself to get roped into this stupid betting pool among his subordinates but there was literally nothing much for them to do to kill the boredom (because with his much security and their relative distance from the Grimm-infested wilds, there was nothing threatening within a ten-mile radius).

"You hear anything?" whispered one of the sergeants.

The others shushed him with the others with extra pairs of ears straightened their faunus appendages to continue listening in.

"Just asking."

"Shut up or we won't be able to get proof that those two up there are fucking," another gendarme snarled.

The captain sighed; he was done with this and needed to take a nap. "You remember my bet. I'll be back to collect it."

"Where you going, cap?"

"Nature calls."

Some of the younger gendarmes quietly snickered as he stomped away to find a bush to relieve himself. Ridiculous as this whole thing was (honestly, guarding people while they had sex was not among his favorite assignments), at least he was guaranteed to make some extra lien with the wagers. And maybe have something to tell to Captain Amitola in case she would ask because Brothers know she was going to ask since, regardless how much she would deny it, she was still somewhat attracted to the Prime Minister's daughter back in the day.

"I knew it," Jaune growled, sitting back up. "They have a betting pool on us."

Blake groaned. "Gods damn it. Why don't we just make some sounds and...ugh, I really don't want to think about it."

"Your mom might just keep us in here for days until you get pregnant. And if it's not her, it'd be my mother. And then my sisters. All seven of them. And then Nora and probably Yang, too, since she was so adamant at being an aunt."

His wife wiped the sweat beading down her forehead and tossed the pillow to the side. "You know what? Fuck this. Let's just get it over with."

Jaune raised his brow. "Are you sure?"

Blake wavered. "No. But I really want to move past this. If they want grandchildren, then let's...let's, uh, give them grandchildren... Oh Brothers..."

For the next moment, the scion of the Arc family regarded his faunus wife. He could never deny that she was beautiful. At Beacon, he regarded her as one of those distant beauties who someone like him would have no chance of scoring with. Post-graduation and years later into their Huntsman careers, however, a part of him constantly wondered if there was a chance, a possibility for a future...with little faunus Arcs running around.

He had considered it a fallacy until the politics of the world suddenly shifted and at the behest of multiple governing bodies, it was either he marry this woman whom he saw no more than a sister or deal with a decade filled with strife, anarchy, and a potential second great war.

"Jaune?" Blake prodded, approaching him, her bare skin glistening in the light of the lanterns hung around them. "Are you okay, dear?"

Jaune blinked out of his reverie and looked down at his crotch. A few seconds later, he felt the blood flowing down there. "... I'm fine. Just...just give me a minute to...get myself in the mood."

"Oh." She leaned back, looking herself over. "Yeah, same here."

Now, for all the experience that Jaune had accumulated so far into his career as a Huntsman, very little of that went to mastering the art of intimate relations. As some friends of his would put it, he put a lot of his skill points into trying to survive and earn a living with his mediocre charisma stat tailored more to getting good deals from the underground markets and negotiating diplomatically in dispute cases.

So that left him with the only foreplay he knew. That was to get up and stretch.

"Seriously?" Blake drawled, sizing him up as he stood straight and waved his limbs about.

"What? It gets the blood flowing."

"You do know that we're in a hotbox right now. You're going to sweat more."

"I mean, yeah, but..." He shrugged. "... You got any better ideas?"

"Other than jumping straight into it?" She shook her head, rubbed her temples, and pulled at her hair before finally groaning in exasperation. "Never mind. Let's do this—come here!"

"Whoa, hey, wait!" He stepped back but she grabbed his toga and pulled, forcing him down on top of her.

Unfortunately, instead of landing face-to-face like in those steamy novels his wife liked to read, he instead ended up with his stomach against her back. Blake, of course, reacted to his full weight pressing down on her and she shoved him off, knocking him to the floor with a thud.

"Sorry!" she apologized while pivoting; she grabbed hold of his flailing legs. "Hold still!"

"Hey, don't knock me around!" he protested, wrestling with her grip and instinctively trying to keep his loincloth on now that his toga was on the carpet.

"I said hold still so we can get started."

"I'm upside-down!"

"Shut up and let me—"

By that point, Blake had snaked her arms around his waist, trying to twist him around. In the struggle, his made to grab her dress only for his fingers to slip through the gaps in the fabric and grip her sides. And, thanks to sweat, he rubbed hard against her ribs. To which she squeaked and started to laugh.

Jaune froze, his ass up in the air and his midsection held in a vice grip by his now cackling wife.

"S-stop it!" she wheezed. "Y-you're, a-hah-hah!"

Then he realized what this was turning into. Before he could bring his legs down, she pushed her arms down to his ribs and started tickling him back. Now he started to wheeze.

"Oh-hoh! S-so that's h-how it is now, huh," he snorted, finally freeing himself and landing on his back. "How 'bout this!"

Blake laughed harder as he moved to assaulting her abdomen, his years of experience tickle-fighting with seven sisters coming into play. But Blake was unlike his sisters and, sleek Huntress that she was, she countered by pressing her fingers into his shoulders and causing him to yelp and let go. Then she flipped him over and, drawing on her knowledge of traditional Menagerie massage, she began pushing down on pressure points over his back.

"Ow! Hey, that's—ooh, wait, that's n-not bad actually!"

She snickered. "Hurts? There's a safe word."

"What safe—whoa! Augh, oh, wah~"

Blake continued down his back but the noises he was making—they were far too sensual and she suspected it was intentional. So she paused to ask to him to stop.

Immediately, Jaune made his move. With his wife sitting on his butt, he suddenly flipped around, throwing her into the cushions next to them and repositioned to his side. She quickly got up but he tripped her and, grabbing the fabric of her dress, he caught her just as she landed on top of him. Then he ran his fingers across her sides again, dropping her into a cackling fit. In response, she snaked her hands under his arm pits and went to work. In less than a minute, they had lost their composure and were howling like hyenas wrestling in a mud pit.

The guard captain had barely zipped up his trousers after irrigating a tree when he heard the bustle of the gendarmes drowned out by the muffled noises coming from the fertility hut. Stomping back, he was met by cheeky smiles including a smug grin from the sergeant who started the bet. He pointed up at the hut, his teeth on display with his wolf ears erect.

"By the Brothers," the captain breathed, hearing the intensity of such passion.

"They're really getting it on," remarked another sergeant. "Anybody recording this?"

"Isn't this already bugged?" a third asked.

"Old privacy law," answered the captain. "Fertility huts are meant to be private for obvious reasons."

"Yeah, but that's like an old law like you said, cap, and it just says that you can't bug the huts," the first sergeant countered, holding up his scroll. "Besides, we're technically outside the hut so that makes us outsiders by definition and outsiders aren't prevented from having keepsakes. Plus, not our fault they're so loud."

The other gendarmes concurred with a few others holding up their own scrolls and hitting record while some dug into their pockets to fulfill some wagers. The guard captain simply shook his head...and whipped out his own scroll. Not for his own use but he was not one to ignore an opportunity to make a few extra lien off Captain Amitola and possibly even that disgraced and currently reforming ex-White Fang commander Adam Taurus.

-~oOo~-

The next day...

Weiss Schnee was happy for Jaune and Blake. Out of everyone in their Beacon cabal, she considered herself the sanest during this whole affair. She did put in the work of restraining her fellow over-excited bridesmaids—especially Pyrrha and Ruby—and ensured that her dearest couple could have an amazing wedding and honeymoon with the political noise mitigated as best as can be.

Now that the festivities had concluded and her friends had since calmed themselves from the debauchery that often followed in the wake of such celebrations, she could now focus on addressing Atlas-Menagerie relations (and mending broken ties). After all, being at the helm of the Schnee Dust Company, it was her prerogative to ensure that relations between her company and the country where the bulk of her workforce came from were at its best so as to bring out the most efficiency in production.

"Hey, Weiss, have you seen Yang?" asked Ruby.

"No." Weiss paused and regarded her old Beacon partner. "I thought she was with you."

"I haven't seen her since last night. We're supposed to meet at the docks later but she hasn't been answering my calls."

"Let me try then." Lady Schnee quickly instructed her valet to inform Prime Minister Ghira Belladonna that she would be late to their meeting with members of the Menagerie Parliament then she whipped out her scroll.

Yang picked up on the fifth ring.

"Sorry, sorry!" she said quickly between ragged breaths. "Got a little busy lately, y'know? Hah!"

"Yang, where are you? You're supposed to be at the docks with Ruby—"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm heading over! Sorry 'bout that. Is Ruby with you?"

"I'm right here," Ruby intoned sternly. "Where are you?"

"Heading to the docks. Just give me a minute. Oh, hold up, I gotta go. Bye! See you later!"

The call then ended. Weiss and Ruby stared at each other. Something about that call didn't sound quite right and it took a while for something to click in Weiss's brain.

Then she asked, "Ruby, have you seen Sun around?"

"Sun? Uh, no? I don't think so. Why?"

Lady Schnee nodded slowly, her eyes narrowing. "Neptune was looking for him this morning. He was worried they would miss their ferry. Are you also going on the same ferry?"

"No. We chartered a different ship."

"Right." Weiss did not want to entertain the thought so she pushed it to the back of her mind—she had more important matters to deal with and she doubted the ship would leave without two of the most recognizable Huntresses of Vale aboard. "Yang will be late."

Ruby furrowed her brow. "Really? Why'd she be late?"

"Just a hunch." Weiss gave her a knowing look. "You're her sister; you should pick up on it by now."

"Pick up on—" Silver eyes went wide. "... Oh for the love of..."

"Can't say it's love. More like lu—"

Ruby stomped off, clearly not wanting to hear any details of whatever steamy affair Yang had gotten up to with Sun Wukong. After all, they were old enough and wise enough to be privy to two extroverted blondes who were close enough to Blake to pick up on the cat faunus's notorious salacity...and repressed and frustrated enough to act on such salacity towards each other.

ORIGINALLY DRAFTED: May 18, 2024

LAST EDITED: May 29, 2024

INITIALLY UPLOADED: May 28, 2024

NOTE (May 28, 2024): My muses are all over the place.